It’s business as usual: an intimate and informal solo performance, drawing on songs from his entire catalogue with new songs to share as well. Each night features a surprise musical guest for a duet or two!

Most exciting for 2017 is the fact Hanlon has managed to convince legendary street performer The Space Lady to accompany him on most shows as support for her first trip to Australia. The Space Lady garnered a cult following through busking on the streets of Boston and San Francisco to support her family, who at one stage were even living in a cave at the top of Mt Shasta, California. Playing an accordion she’d found in a junkshop and a cheap Casiotone keyboard, she’d mix songs written by her husband with gloriously celestial covers like Suicide’s Ghost Riders In The Sky, Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild, Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz and Steve Miller’s Fly Like An Eagle.

Hanlon saw her perform to a packed theatre in Portland this year and was moved by the experience: “It was a mass catharsis…people all around me reacted emotionally to the performance,” he says, “With the constant barrage of depressing news headlines this year The Space Lady’s set really felt like a bit of an antidote. It’s not like she’s playing songs overtly spiritual in content, but she does have a kind of glowing presence. It’s really hard to explain unless you see it.”

Meeting her through his good friend Eric Isaacson, owner of Portland’s famed Mississippi Records that reissued her album The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits, Darren was able to persuade her to join him this December for the Xmas tour.

Hanlon has spent much of 2017 living in the US where he’s divided his time between writing and touring. The year started with him opening a string of shows for Seattle indie pop heroes Chastity Belt. Hanlon had previously met the girls when they both completed the bill for a Courtney Barnett tour a couple of years back and became fast friends.

From there he started work on what will be his 6th studio album, recording preliminary tracks with Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Josephine Foster, Benjamin Booker) at his Bomb Shelter studio in Nashville, TN. Hanlon capped off his his overseas journey with a festival performance in Chapel Hill, celebrating 20 years of his US label Yep Roc, sharing the stage with Nick Lowe and Alejandro Escoveda.

Don’t miss what are now becoming rare chances to see Darren Hanlon play around his homeland!